Apologetics Archive

Pascal and Marcus Aurelius

Posted February 24, 2024 By John C Wright

Two great figures of times past, Pascale and Marcus Aurelius, pagan and Christian, address the wager of the unknowable in nearly equal terms.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Faith and Works in a Science Fictional Universe

Posted February 6, 2024 By John C Wright

From  2014, but perhaps of current interest:

I have been asked to write a brief essay about how my faith informs my work, and what is the general relation of Catholicism to Science Fiction.

Unfortunately, I cannot.

This is not because I have no opinions on the topic, but rather because they cannot be told briefly.

I must give something of my background story to explain how I came by my answers, in order to give the answers fully. I beg the indulgence of the patient reader:

Few men have ever hated as much as Christ as I have, before turning to love him. Before I was a Catholic, I was an atheist, and not an atheist who kept his opinions to himself, but, rather, a vituperative, proselytizing, aggressive, evangelist of atheism, who sought at every opportunity to spread the Bad News that God Was Dead and Christians were Fools.

But there was one area sacrosanct from my proselytizing effort. I did not use my science fiction stories to preach nor promote my worldview.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Epistle to Ansgar, Letter 04: God the Holy Ghost

Posted January 30, 2024 By John C Wright

28 January AD 2024, Feast of St Thomas Aquinas

Dear Godson,

This day is the Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the schoolman who, for once and all, reconciled faith and philosophy, church and science.

Any man who says there is conflict speaks in ignorance, or in malice, either being too literal in his interpretation of scripture, or too hasty in calling the ever-changing guesswork of science factual. It is to be noted that true Churchmen and true scientists themselves see no such conflict, nor appearance of conflict.

The same Holy Ghost who inspired Moses and the prophets, and inspired the saints and apostles, was He who moved softly across the face of the deep when creation was formless and void, brooding as a dove over her chicks. The Creator will not take amiss any disciplined and honest investigation of the artwork and architecture involved in the making of stars and atoms, sea and sky, microbe and mastodon, the geometry of the leaf, the lifecycle of galaxies, the engineering of the inner amoeba.

Thomas Aquinas would approve of any intellectual approach to these great things that kept its aim and nature in mind: science is meant to topple the idols of false beliefs about nature, not to erect them.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Collectivism and Objectivism

Posted January 27, 2024 By John C Wright

I am a fan and admirer of Ayn Rand, as much an admirer as one can be who thinks the object of his admiration is wrong and evil. I feel the same way about Thomas Hobbes, proponent of absolute government. He is wrong and evil, but he uses admirably precise logic to reach his wrong and evil conclusions.

Ayn Rand was an atheist, and rejected God with disgust. She was, however, a passionate adversary of all offshoots of Marxism and irrationalism. Hence, she was able to diagnose the disease of secular collectivism perfectly, but not see the related disease secular individualism infecting her.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

The Fruit without the Root

Posted January 25, 2024 By John C Wright

Tradition, of itself, is inadequate to justify itself. A tradition can only be justified, or, if unsound, criticized, from its own roots.

Of late, more and more of our agnostic or atheist conservative brethren, seeing the confused if not diabolical current state of the world, and foreseeing it fate if current trends continue, confess that the secular philosophy of the classical liberalism of the Age of Reason seems woefully inadequate to mount as robust defense against the Seven-Headed Beast nihilist philosophers, dogmatic subjectivists, cultural vandals, puritanical sex-deviants, socialist plutocrats, totalitarian anarchists, and pro-jihad atheists, variously referred to as Progressives, Postmoderns, Pervertarians, Wokesters, Critical Race-Hustlers, Cultural Marxists, and Morlocks.

Public men of letters including such figures as psychiatrist Jordan Peterson, mathematician James Lindsay, and ancient Akkadian emperor Carl Benjamin, with a degree of reluctance more or less, have admitted with a degree of candor more or less that only the Christian tradition embedded into our laws and customs stand a chance of fighting the foe.

These men admit that Christian tradition alone is robust enough to fight the Antichrist. But they are secular men, and godless. They see the fruit but doubt the root.  Such is their conundrum.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Epistles to Ansgar Letter 03: God the Son

Posted January 18, 2024 By John C Wright

This letter is two or three weeks late, but Ansgar is a babe in arms as yet, and may not notice the delay. 

25 December AD 2023, Feast of the Nativity

Dear Godson,

This day is Christmas. So holy is this day that all witches curses fail, nor may stars and planets in adverse conjunctions shed malign influences. For this is the day, foretold since Eden, when Our Lord, the Messiah and Savior of the world is born.

Because the tradition to exchange gifts on this day has had so profound an effect on the surrounding culture, among Christians and nonbelievers alike, it is easy to forget the meaning of this central miracle, a miracle beating at the heart of human history, that this great day commemorates.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Spies and Scientists in the Unseen World

Posted January 7, 2024 By John C Wright

I received a charming but disturbing compliment to one of my columns on Wokeness being a materialist restatement of Gnosticism. She writes:

I absolutely LOVED your article. Me, swimming somewhere between theosophist mystic and evangelical Christian and alchemical magician and ascetic world hating environmental evolutionist, I have to say, you brought this to absolute clarity! But I am not a gnostic! I know the whole schematic and I detest it. But it drives a molehole throughout our entire existence yes.

I believe in a God that is Good although he may be unreachable and a Savior that gives us a chance to redeem ourselves by following in HER footsteps. I believe in that bridge back to Paradise and it starts with me.

My comment: I am as pleased with flattery as any man of below-average dignity, so I am glad she liked my column. I rejoice to hear that she detests Gnosticism, which I regard as a satanic parody of all that is good.

However, the waggish and casual blasphemy with which she ends her note prompts me to issue a warning, which I think may be of use to my beloved readers,  or to any who have ears to hear.

The unseen world is unseen.

That does not mean we have license to invent any fables as tickle our fancy about it. The unseen may be listening.

What little we know of it comes from visions and dreams and intuitions we have gathered on our own, or from revelations, accompanied by signs and wonders, from sources in the unseen world, or spokesmen allegedly representing those sources. It is a twilight world, one glimpsed in a darkling looking-glass.

What, then, are we to make of the unseen?

In particular, what are we to make of visions or visionaries that are rare, unusual, or even contrary to what generations have held true about the unseen world?

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

The Pope and Blessing Sodomites

Posted December 19, 2023 By John C Wright

The mainstream media, hereafter called the Voice of Sauron, is agitated and enthused by the rumors, concocted, as it happens, by the Voice of Sauron alone, that Pope Francis has permitted the blessing of sodomite marriage unions.

As with most things uttered by the Voice of Sauron, this is not merely a falsehood but the diametric opposite of the truth.

This is not even a case where the Pope spoke in ambiguous language creating an opening for scandal. It is merely a lie.

The document signed by the Pope says the Church does not have the power to impart blessings on unions of persons of the same sex.
Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Epistle to Ansgar: Letter 02

Posted December 18, 2023 By John C Wright

17 December AD 2023, Gaudete Sunday

Dear Godson,

This day is “Gaudete” Sunday, which is the third Sunday in Advent. Church candles and churchmen are garbed in vestments of rose-red, but everyone calls it pink. It is the Sunday of Joy, for Gaudete is the Latin word for rejoicing.

Advent includes four weeks leading up to Christmas, which is the nativity of Our Lord. On this day the Lord God Almighty came to earth as a helpless baby, small enough to hold in your arms, cradling his little head in your hand. He was prophet, priest and prince from the moment of his birth, and the worldly kings sought his life both then and thereafter. There is nothing worldly powers hate more than heavenly powers.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

God’s Passions and Man’s Reason

Posted December 18, 2023 By John C Wright

A reader writes in with deep questions that I attempt, at least in part, to address. I thought my readers might be interested in the exchange.

His first question was whether God experiences emotions sequentially in response to human events?

My answer was that no one knows, and I doubt anyone can imagine, what it might be in eternity to look in on events in time, while knowing the beginning and ending of those events, seeing them all at once.

A helpful analogy for me (since I am an author) is to look at the inspiration for a story.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Giving Atheists a Chance to Give God a Chance

Posted December 14, 2023 By John C Wright
This is an excerpt from a lecture from 2015, perhaps worth repeating, in part:

As an ex-atheist, I should have at least some credentials when addressing the core issue of our age:

What can reach the atheist, who is lost and floundering out in the darkness he calls enlightenment?

The first thing to recall is that we alone can do nothing.

It is the Holy Spirit that converts the skeptic.

For reasons too mysterious to comprehend, God, who created us in His own image, gave us freedom of the will akin to His own. He will allow us freely to fling ourselves into the hellfire if that is what we freely wish.

Therefore the Holy Spirit will stand at the door of the atheist heart and knock, but not enter unless invited.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Epistles to Ansgar: Letter 01

Posted December 8, 2023 By John C Wright

7 December AD 2023, Feast Day of St. Ambrose

Dear Godson,

To instruct you in the mysteries of the faith is the duty and joy of a godfather. It falls on a godfather to introduce, as best he may, to his godson the God who is to Our Father in Heaven, and tell of His wonders.

This is an auspicious day to begin the task for Saint Ambrose, whose feast today it is, is famed for reconciling the opposite parties when controversy divided the Church.

So might these letters aid you in finding fit words to say to tell of the faith within you, and to explain with those who have ears to hear how the gift from God called reason and the gift from God called faith are not now, and can never be, at odds.

But where to begin?

Were I to teach you geometry, beloved godson, it would be proper to begin at the premises and common notions and definitions, for these are the beginning of that study. But the faith is in all things and informs all things, and so anywhere is a proper beginning: all roads lead to Rome.

So I will start with this letter, this sentence. I am late in writing it. Alas, I take up my pen tardily, but readily. I meant to do this yesterday, but it slipped my mind.

Therefore let me be an example for you: In later years, when you find yourself to have fallen short, perhaps less perfect in charity than you should have been, do not allow this imperfection to hinder the speed at which you will begin to repent and to make amends.

Even in so small as thing as failing to remember to write a letter, we Sons of Adam know what is right, and we do not do it. We are imperfect beings who cannot escape the longing for perfection.

Why is that? What is man?

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Job Psalm to Wisdom

Posted October 30, 2023 By John C Wright

This gem is hidden in the midst of the Book of Job, and, as best I can tell, had little to do with anything that comes before or after, differing in mood from Job’s other speeches. Nor does it sound like the accusations of the three so-called comforters, nor the young man, nor the voice from the whirlwind. So I am not sure what to make of it, but I admire the beauty, depth, clarity, symmetry:

CHAPTER 28 of the Book of Job

1 Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they find it.

Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.

He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death.

The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant; even the waters forgotten of the foot: they are dried up, they are gone away from men.

As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire.

The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of gold.

There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen:

The lion’s whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it.

He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots.

10 He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing.

11 He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light.

————————

12 But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?

13 Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

Ye Have Not Spoken Rightly of the Lord

Posted October 27, 2023 By John C Wright

The Trials of Job and the Trial of God

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. — GK Chesterton

As wiser pens than mine have written, the Book of Job is both an historical mystery and a theological mystery. It addresses the suffering of the innocent, or, closer to the mark, the suffering of the righteous. Job suffers when he deserves it not, because and only because he deserves it not.

The Book of Job raises questions never answered, or answers questions with questions, and yet, somehow, the words offer comfort without offering answers.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment

The Antediluvians

Posted May 23, 2023 By John C Wright

I was watching a lecture series on the Book of Genesis, and paid particular attention to the passages normally overlooked, the genealogies, which I suppose Moses included because there was no other reckoning of years between the events of the Fall, the First Murder, the Flood and so on. Without such a reckoning, the story would merely float in the “long-ago dream-time” of myth and legend — the one thing fatal to a historical text.

The lecturer ventured the meaning of the names of the generations of Cain and Adam.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Be the first to comment